About John (JR) McCormack
Awards Presentation night with Hon Grant Robinson - Art Gold Awards, 2019
A professional gazer - seeing is everything
Born Wyndham, Southland, New Zealand.
1973 Started work as an apprentice chef. Cooked, surfed and shot a lot of film. Passion for photography and art evident.
1980 Twenty years professional white water river guide, medical ski patroller, tandem paragliding pilot and action photographer. Painting during injury recovery times.
Visited New Mexico, USA, mainly Taos and Santa Fe several times for private art study.
2000 Became full time artist.
Awarded Ist place in the Queenstown (N.Z) Far Out Art Competition.
Several solo and combined art exhibitions to include Arrowtown Autumn Festival and the Queenstown Art Society.
2005 Shortlisted for New York art residency by Creative N.Z.
Major art exhibition in Queenstown featuring the Stolen Westy's Teapot series.
2008 Published in the book New Zealand Favourite Artists 2 by Denis Robinson.
2010 Combined exhibition at the City Gallery, Invercargill, Southland.
Solo exhibition in Queenstown.
Solo exhibition in Clyde, Central Otago.
2014 Commissioned by Kiwipark Queenstown to paint an outdoor stage mural for live bird shows - 'Kowhai tree in flower with beech tree'.
2016-2020 Multiple exhibitions at the Ivy Box Gallery, Queenstown.
2019 Published in March-April edition, Issue No.33 'Gazing South' The New Zealand Artist Magazine
Finalist in the Arts Gold Awards, a New Zealand wide art exhibition held in Alexandra, Central Otago judged by Dick Frizzell and Jim Geddes.
2023 Published in the Spring edition Issue No. 15, 1964 Mountain Culture Aotearoa magazine
2024 Published in the Winter edition Issue No. 18, 1964 Mountain Culture Aotearoa magazine
Works in private collections both nationally and internationally.
Lives at Cape Foulwind, New Zealand and has own gallery studio.
Critique and comments from art industry insiders
"I can see why your artwork creates a stir, it's refreshing to see someone who is not afraid to hold back, to have a sense of fun and humour as if begging the viewer not to take themselves so seriously, to see the lighter side of life. The irony and puns are rewarding and they're satirical, political, commentary, interesting and thought provoking, the surrealist influences in your work are evident and it's clearly a style that interests you and suits your painterly methodology. Very very promising."
(Jacinta - Gallery Associate, Milford Galleries Queenstown)
"Having known John only by email contact and the visual images of his art that he emailed me regularly, it was great to finally meet him and his paintings in person at his studio in Gorge Road Queenstown a couple of weeks back. It was then that all of those photos of his paintings came to life and in particular the famous teapot. The series of paintings (Stolen Westy's Teapots) has been work in progress for the best part of 3 years. The paintings capture in a quirky way selective events that have occurred during that period. Some laughable and others slightly more serious. The teapots tell a story, its version of what happened since it was taken from the infamous Westy's restaurant in Queenstown.
Although John has no formal training at art schools like Ilam and Elam etc, he does have the art of an impressive and mature artist. He was shortlisted for a residency in New York but missed on that, if that had happened we might not have seen this series of work come to life, so in retrospect we are all lucky the New York thing didn't come off, John may beg to differ.
To end, it's a tight exhibition, the paintings are well refined and they involve us - Go the teapots"
(Simon Fisher - Director, Fisher Fine Arts, N.Z)
"Saw your show today at the City Gallery in Invercargill. It certainly invades the space with a vengeance. Good on ya"
(Tony Bishop - Legendary Outsider Artist)
